Is there any law which supports men?

Recently someone sent email via our NGO website and upon my reply to his email giving some basic advice and further suggestion to join our groups, he replied back asking with a profound question, which triggered the need for writing this article. His full email had only one sentence: “ok thank u but is there no law which supports men can police help”. As an aside, I am unable to understand why do some people (though it has come down a lot) reply to my email asking a further question ignoring the standard large sized red coloured matter at the end of my every email: “I will not reply to personal emails for advice in future. Guidance is given only inside groups.”? My guess is that many a man facing cases from their wives, somehow feel entitled to ignore such ‘minor’ inconvenient instructions! After all, they are ‘victims’ of false cases, and they deserve more/better/special listening. I just hope they don’t ignore these minor points when they read wife’s DV Act petition, complaint to CAW cell, FIR, lawyer’s reply draft, and so on, else they will be separated from their life earnings without them ever coming to know how exactly it all happened!

Someone had asked a very similar question about the topic “Is there any law for men in India” on Quora to which I had replied. The question and answers are at link below:

Before going into the profound question of “which laws support men”, a digression is in order. I think the main problem with Indian mind-set is very simple. We don’t believe in laws, we believe more in the following principles of power/protection and enhancement in life: mai-baap(godfather) power/protection, power based on opportunistic behaviour/brute force/misuse of law, protection and power based on community/connections, or the good old money based power and protection. Some of these are interlinked and overlapping, e.g., a mai-baap godfather may emerge from one’s own community or relations, so the best way to cultivate a mai-baap is within one’s own relations and friends, rather than buying a godfather (e.g. bribing the IO) based on money power.

Before attempting to understand more about laws, some misconceptions need to be erased which will hold people back from effectively fighting the false cases foisted on them.

Why mai-baap won’t work in false cases filed by women?

The belief in mai-baap can be normal for a culture built around family, community etc where individual needs are desires are not considered paramount compared to family/community; and where more than the law courts it’s the family/community who tend to sit on disputes and try to settle them. Usually in such societies, there are more powerful or respected individuals who will emerge as mai-baap within the society or at least as mai-baap for an issue concerning their own department. People will rely on them for solutions rather than going by the book.

Let’s take the best possible example of a mai-baap who may emerge for some lucky ones. Wife filed case under IPC 498A, and someone in your relations is a SP or even higher up in police. So what can he do for you?

Nothing. Apart from giving some advice which you may be inclined to trust more given it’s from a known person.

Even if he wanted to, he would absolutely do nothing to ‘help’ you out. Trying to meddle with even a prima-facie false case is going against the women-empowerment theme these days. So no police officer will try to nip the false case in bud. In fact, it’s very commonly seen that the junior constable level people may believe the husband’s story, but the seniors in police station will go with the tried and tested formula: “Either you sort out the family problem yourselves, or we will take wife’s complaint.”

Using community/relations to get relief

This one is probably the most ineffective mode these days. Even one senior governmental official told me off the record, that she doesn’t try to help arrange or fix any matrimonial alliances these days. She did not state the reason, but the implicit point was that people may mess up their relationship due to own fancy ideas, and the matchmaker will then get part of the blame.

Mediator or Samaj ki baithak: This is another thing which proves quite useless when legal cases are filed or about to be filed by feminist/matriarchal family or toxic female, because with rising incomes, rising property values, and consumerism; the toxic females have decided that money can give respect and protection easily, and so respect and hold of marriage mediator (the same who help arrange marriage) or samaj on feminist/toxic females is close to zero. The feminist/toxic female has grown in a household where male authority or respect is unheard of. If at all males of family are given some status or respect, it’s basically a sham held for the eyes of external society. It’s about as much power or respect as that of the porter/coolie who holds and carries your suitcase filled with valuables above his head. Merely by carrying that burden, he doesn’t become the owner of the suitcase filled with valuables!

Panchayat ka nyaya: Let’s discuss cases where panchayat is held, and the panchayat even gives observations which are in favour of husband and his family. The panchayat says that the wife is at fault by leaving the house of husband without any reason, and our guy jumps up with joy.

The problem is that panchayat is not a court, it’s a mechanism of resolving disputes within the community, and if someone doesn’t agree with that decision, they can approach the police or court as the case may be. So a panchayat’s decision has no force in terms of influencing judgment of a court which is duty bound to do it’s own trial, see the evidences produces by both sides, and come to a conclusion based only on court trial and evidences produced. Only if some panchayat member comes as a witness to court during trial, and gives evidence in your favour, that individual testimony will be useful. It will still not be considered as support of panchayat, but only testimony of an individual.

Money and bribe

This one is great hope and fascination for middle-class-easily-scared-of-police-and-courts Indians who probably have money to spare but courage is in short supply. Many have grown up believing or experiencing for themselves that paying bribe is one sure shot of way to get the stuck wheels moving during governmental work.

Why should indulging in a crime of giving bribe to a law officer (police), enable that law officer to do his job of upholding the law better? By receiving a bribe, he/she also becomes part of the same crime, and so unless you believe in “honour among thieves”, this mutual criminal act is going to be of no real use. I have heard amounts ranging from tens of thousands to more than a lakh being given to IO, but I haven’t heard a single case where someone can conclusively prove that they got a ‘benefit’ from IO which was because of the bribe. Most likely, the so called ‘benefit’ was not really a favour, but as a result of proper investigation, which the IO was supposed to do anyway. As already mentioned earlier, no police person will either himself/herself or be allowed by seniors to NOT take a woman’s complaint at face value. So the end result will be the same – there is no escape from FIR, charge-sheet, and subsequent trial in court. Below are some more practical and ethical points about bribes:

1. Your in-laws can also give a bribe. When people say: “My in-laws are powerful and connected” (which is wrong statement actually), what stops the supposedly powerful in-laws from giving a bribe matching or exceeding in value that you have given?

2. If law and justice is working by giving bribes, then there are serious and fundamental problems with that process of law and justice. It can be safely said that there is no law and justice, it’s a commodity which can be bought at the right price, and the price is decided low or high based on whether there was no crime done, or there was an actual crime done. So it is a subversion of law — whatever emotional, sentimental, or practical excuse can people come up with doesn’t matter. Those are just favourite self-justifications and a survival mechanism of Indians.

Power based on opportunistic behaviour/brute force/misuse of law

This actually is the power which is used by toxic females and their families, which is to misuse laws which were meant for protection of women. By doing that, they are also acting in a crass opportunistic manner and using the approach of “jiski lathi uski bhains” – whoever holds the power can have his or her way. In their minds, the women protection laws and the system is like their own personal mai-baap who will allow them to file false cases, and protect them from all possible repercussions. But as it is increasingly been seen, many of these toxic females are not getting the easy results they hoped for, because of effective fight back by men.

Now at last we come to probably most thought about idea by people: how to get rid of these false cases, by using some legal technique, loophole, or even by filing a counter case?

That idea actually reflects the core belief that it is perfectly fine to use/misuse the law. But it’s not a very honest approach when one keeps saying “false case, false case” at every opportunity.

This also shows that many Indians have no understanding of law. They think law should be like a mai-baap who should protect and further their interests, whereas law is supposed to be blind in terms of who is the person who is approaching it. There is a reason Lady Justice is shown blindfolded.

My guess is that why people place more trust in mai-baap based solutions and justice rather than impartial law based justice is a cultural thing. Probably, the more community rather than individual orientation is there in a society, the more trust will be placed in community or mai-baaps for dispute resolution rather than in an impartial court.

The problem to understand is very simple: once the legal cases whether civil or criminal have gone to court, the mai-baap or community based solutions have been passed over already in favour of legal solution. So the only way to get justice then is to learn basics of law, and fight with right evidences and arguments in front of court, and forget all other approaches, because the time for those is already gone.

What laws are there which can help men?

There are no special laws to protect men from women, and while there should be in relation to domestic violence, sexual harassment, or even criminal laws; that’s the topic of another post and I am trying to drive a different point here.

Even having a domestic violence law to protect a man from violent wife, is NOT the same as having a law which can stop false DV cases by women.

Even having an IPC 498B for husbands against wives will not be a safeguard from facing false 498A. Because even if in future an IPC 498B: Cruelty on Husbands law is passed, and police is cooperating fully to take as FIR as complaints by husbands under IPC 498B, the same police may also file FIR by wife under IPC 498A, just as they are doing now.

So if people’s assumption is that the only way to tackle a false complaint is to file a genuine or a counter complaint of some kind, then it’s an assumption driven more by belief of “jiski lathi uski bhains”, or force can be countered only by force. It has no basis in operation of justice as it is normally intended to work.

That belief also assumed that courts are places where innocents get harassed, so the only way to get justice is to harass the opponents and thereby that harassment will force them to come to bargaining table and close the cases.

It’s a convenient but very lazy and escapist assumption indeed. This is worse than even a jugaad mind-set, because a jugaad is driven by lack of resources or as a short term fix only, but this escapist mind-set actually creates a permanent problem where justice can never be delivered, but it can only be extracted by resourceful and probably even dishonest people.

The only way to stop false cases is to work towards rigorous prosecution of all false cases and false evidences, including wrong investigation by police. This is covered in this post:

Even if repeating again, filing either RCR (for bail or saving maintenance) or divorce (for pressure purpose) on wife are mistakes, RCR being much bigger one, since it tends to condone wife’s past behaviour, and almost invariably attracts full set of legal cases from wife, because the toxic females prefer husband filing divorce instead which they then hope to give to him in return of fat alimony.

Some people file divorce on wife hoping she will have to travel to husband’s hometown thereby causing her harassment due to travel, but she goes to HC/SC as applicable to get case transferred in her native town, and there ends husband’s grand plan to harass wife!

The most important law which helps men – Indian Evidence Act

One can also read the answer at quora, but in this article I want to make the point very simple, so want to focus only on one law everyone facing a false case should know about. Of course by now if it’s not clear to you that trying techniques like looking for some IPC 498B type of law, filing RCR to save maintenance, filing divorce to harass; are not in right spirit of law, then the following will also seem like mumbo jumbo, so your best course might be to stop reading further, and continue the never ending search for a good divorce lawyer instead.

Another popular and convenient myth that is commonly heard is that “law is for women these days”, “law is in favour of women” etc. And the interesting thing is that it’s not just the layman public, but lawyers themselves who are often heard making these ‘wisdom’-filled statements.

While it is true that laws have been created which protect and give reliefs only to women, it doesn’t mean the same thing as that the law will blindly favour women and give them whatever they have asked for.

If lady justice is blindfolded, then there is no question of the law favouring any party or complainant. Law can only punish or give reliefs to claimant if they can prove based on evidences that they faced a crime or are entitled to claimed reliefs.

If law can favour women, then there will be no need to conduct any trial or ask parties to submit their evidences, conduct cross-examinations, indulge in useless legal arguments. It will be much simpler to peruse the complaint/FIR and simply pronounce the husband as guilty and punished for 3 years in jail under IPC 498A etc. Or simply take wife’s DV petition at face value and award her the 50K per month and 2 lakh compensation she has asked for. Even those who claim that law favours women haven’t produced a single instance where this has actually happened.

Since court can’t pronounce anyone’s guilt or liability without looking at evidence, then it can be safely said that Indian Evidence Act is the most important law men should be aware of. Everything else, the contradiction filled police complaint, vague allegations, the false jewellery list, the tears in courtroom; might have some sympathy or drama value, but have zero value in terms of evidence.

In court trials, only evidences whether documentary or statements by witnesses are what matter for the final decision, assuming of course that one is making lawyer do the work of cross-examination, filing documents etc at right times. The biggest problem with people is that they don’t have a very vague idea of what is evidence, don’t know what is good versus not-so-good or even bad evidence, and moreover due to over-emotional (lack of) thinking, are unable to apply themselves properly to collect and submit evidence to court at right time. Not managing lawyer and leaving things to lawyer assuming he/she’s the expert are the other major problem. Without good evidence, lawyer becomes more like a glorified clerk whose job becomes only to submit petitions and statements, and do routine cross-examination which is unable to destroy the opponents’ false case convincingly.

Now what is evidence and what is not? E.g. wife’s preposterous allegations and false list of ‘dowry’ in CAW cell are not really any evidences. But many husbands get floored at that first hurdle itself and readily move towards the C-word called Compromise.

Photocopies of documents are not acceptable as evidence. But they can still be used in cross-examination of opponent and based on the situation can elicit useful points in one’s favour. So one need not lose heart if one doesn’t have original documents for everything.

Audio recordings are admissible as evidence. If the opponent lawyer objects, they can go for voice sample and authentication, but by itself audio recording can’t be dismissed away. This is another myth being spread by lawyers that audio recording won’t work in court. Maybe the problem is laziness, lack of application, and lack of enthusiasm for fighting husband’s case, so he can be steered towards the C-word. To some extent, even public is to be blamed who unquestioningly believes lawyers’ words which go against common sense.

Relying on panchayat or neighbours as witnesses who saw what actually happened, is fine in theory. But in courts, documentary evidences stand the best chance, simply because given the long duration of trials, there is no guarantee your witness may not have moved to another place, or will be as keen to give evidence 2 years from now as he/she may be right now.

Everyone should learn a bit of law… Lie detector test results are not considered evidence, they can only be used by police for investigation. Police/investigating agency may find you truthful in these tests and still proceed with filing chargesheet etc, as they do even now since it’s considered almost a sacred duty to file chargesheet in a crime against women case no matter what evidences may be available to prove crime didn’t happen!

Even then lie detector etc can be done only if ordered by court. The reason police is not allowed to do them without court’s permission is that it is considered human rights violation. Imagine if police started picking up people randomly on any false complaint made by someone, and started doing narco-analysis or lie detector tests.

I join the column late. However, my approach to the problem is positive and aggressive. Let us not bother about the laws- favoring women or not as we cannot change them overnight, though we can point out the lapses of the law before the HC and SC with appropriate reasoning at appropriate time..Our basic aim should be to fight against the injustice with the knowledge of laws,reasoning power and a lot of confidence. And keeping the mind open to new ideas. From my own experience, I say that with the above armory one can squarely face any injustice inflicted on u through any law-498A, DV Act, DP Act, HMA, IPC-307, 506 etc. So one should fight back and not lament.

In country like India, there are the laws for women only. Though law says that its equal for men and women, but strongly favor the women. Women can take action against men even in a fraud case. My brother has been the victim of fraud case. He has been sentenced jail for 5 years.

A good article .But there is a fundamental defect i.e. not accepting the problem that all law almost favours women and anti male .These law are not misused rather these are misdrafted.Unless we understand this there is not even recognition of most basic problem and we would continue with wrong laws . Let us ask most basic question what rights husband have in marriage and how he can enforce them legally .The answer is almost zero .Husband have today almost zero legal rights except to file for divorce he has no legal remedy against wife .Section 9 of Hindu marriage Act for restitution is useless .Again husbands are thoughts to have a lot of rights by a common man which he think he can execute illegally .But what legal rights .Whereas Wife can file cases under section 125 CrPC for maintenance under Dowry Prohibition Act 1961 which restrict the freedom of man to demand money but woman can choose rich husband .Section 498a for demand of property or cruelty and for various relief including maintenance ,residence in husband house for free under domestic Violence act under which definition of violence is very wide and almost anything done by husbands can be declared as domestic violence .Now the question is where are rights of husbands and how and where he should file case for relief .As husbands have zero rights under the law they can only defend the case not file the case for their rights .That is why lawyers statement that law are in favour of women only is fully correct .question of evidence and proving of wife case is false comes later only .Secondly it is not equality that whosoever demand maintenance whether husband or wife .Because justice is not that .Why husbands have to pay maintenance and alimony for free as a legal right but do not get anything in return for that maintenance .Husband have to work outside and have to satisfy his boss/employer/customer/client to earn money .But court would grant free maintenance/alimony to wife for no rights to husbands .That is it makes women to file cases and sit at home doing nothing and claim equality .But they not bring equal money rather law loots the husband to give free money to wife till death or remarriage with no rights to husbands and no amount of evidence would change the basic law .If wife would have been contributing anything than after wife leaves than the husbands income must be reduced as wife is not helping him .or husband have to pay someone else for the work done by her .But wife would be paid maintenance but with no rights to husbands .It creates a fundamental mindset that wives have rights upon husbands income but husbands have no right in return of this .That is law need to change and end the notion that Husband has to pay maintenance/alimony to wife forever or till death for nothing .That is why law of maintenance is fundamentally anti male.In previous time wife have to serve her husband life long and have to produce child for him and have to obey him in Hinduism and there was no concept of divorce .In return husband have to provide maintenance .Now rights of husbands zero and wife has her right .And this all is just tip of iceberg.So men always have to fight for change of laws which are one sided and anti male.

That laws like IPC 498A, child custody decisions, and other maintenance laws including DV Act are one-sided is not a new discovery, nor does this article claim that laws are not in favour of women.

Laws including Hindu marriage act don’t prescribe any duties for wives presumably because of male vanity, who tend to think that only males need to be prescribed duties in law, so that OTHER evil men can’t harm innocent women 😀

This article is basically about dealing with husband’s own individual cases, not about change of one-sided laws. There are many other articles about that on this site.

The subtle but missed point by public (and most matrimonial ‘learned’ lawyers) who say that law favours women is that they tend to suggest that courts will order in favour of woman even without much or zero evidence. If that is happening interim maintenance, and child custody/visitation decisions; it is more of new/biased interpretation of law and due to so called liberal and feminism informed judicial mindset of granting orders based on supposed ‘equity’ even if those orders are against justice as per produced evidence. If a woman tells a lie, it is brushed away as not a major problem. That is a worldwide problem in cases in family courts and in DV cases. For that reason, primacy of evidence based judicial decisions needs to be restored in matrimonial cases.

And if a lawyer says that “court will always award some maintenance” or “court gives child custody to women normally”, then it must be asked what amount of law or legal practice do these lawyers know when they don’t show an honest desire to fight based on written law and evidence? Nowhere does the law say that matrimonial cases can be decided based on allegations and surmises, without evidence.

And many men are not taking care to produce right evidence at right stage. Before and if ever laws get changed, one still needs to fight one’s own case and fighting it based on arguments only won’t work.

And in future if the laws like DV Act are changed and made gender neutral, but decisions are still based not primarily on evidence but based on (woman’s) allegations, then again having a gender neutral law by itself won’t make much difference. This indeed is the case in many western countries where laws of domestic violence and divorce/child support/child custody may seem gender neutral on paper, but how the judges apply them is not neutral at all! They will give a restraining order on father, take his house/car away and give to wife (in name of children) merely on her expressed apprehension and fear! No need of evidence at all before pronouncing a restraining order! All that checking of evidence comes later, and by then they hold carrot of child access to father to bow down to wife’s demands.

So change of laws won’t make huge difference unless the principle of evidence is given supremacy.

knowing about the law loopholes and sticking to truth can bail you out. If have done good work or generous donation to others this thing will not happen. False cases can act as boon rather than curse. you will get off the wrong woman from your life rather suffering from emotional and psychological torture from that person. Note that very problem has solution with opportunity.

1. Can Police Modify the FIR contents/dates while submitting Final Report/charge sheet? Date of Crime (From-To) has been modified on the FIR copy and its evident that police tried to change a printed date with another date, struck off and added one more date on top of it (hand written). No mention of these changes or justification for this has been provided in the files. Is this act punishable? 2. On the same day of filing the chanrgesheet, statements of external witnesses have been collected and added to the files. Where, none of the witnesses says “This is what we know” but they say “This is what we were told and came to know thru complainant wife and we are giving witness statement because of that”. How much weightage this carry? Wont this amount to Perjury?

All these things will make the prosecution case weak, but the trial can’t be avoided. To my knowledge, police’s shoddy work goes unpunished almost all the time, unless you are willing to raise it and take it up to SC when the time comes. I doubt judges care much about bad job by police to actually punish except noting some remarks in judgment.

men are beneath women and they have no real use for men. women have the power to turn everything around. All they have to do is make men surrender to their femininity. Men believe women are going to leave the world of work, go back into the home, and be housewives and mothers in large numbers. Women are independent, strong woman who does not need men. Women can support themselves and create families all by themselves. Having a man in the household who’s entire contribution consists of 2 sperm cells over the lifetime, and may have enough money to pay for his own expenses is a questionable value proposition. That a man should compromise on his life choices and should compulsory pay spousal support if he gets a divorce even if he is unemployed. A single woman can live her life the way she prefers, get her way 100% of the time, raise her kids as she sees fit and have no strings attached. That all men are evil-doer, a wrongdoer, a culprit, a scallywag, a lag, and a villain.

Thank you for this wonderful article. Whatever you said was correct. But I believe most so-called middle class working people are scared of police itself and getting arrested. Court proceedings comes later and of-course inevitable. A lot of money, time and resources are spent on getting bail. I am eager to have an article from you on bail mechanism.